2014/04/27

“Capital in the 21st Century” is a game-changer

Another book to purchase on Kindle and read on my iPad. I am increasingly concerned about the shrinking middle class in the US and how the economic prescriptions of both primary parties utterly fail to address it. It should be the biggest concern of the electorate and ties into the power of the moneyed oligarch's to destroy the goose that laid the golden egg. We must find workable remedies and I will be voting for people and policies that address it with priority.

"Piketty is a symbol of the increasing consensus among academic economists and political scientists about inequality and democracy. This consensus, which has been demonstrated in innumerablestudies,reportsandbooksalready, establishes a few propositions: Inequality has been increasing in the United States over the past three decades. This inequality has been defined particularly by anexplosion among the very top, be it the 1 percent or the 0.1 percent (or even the .01 percent). This concentration of economic power has coincided with anincrease in political powerforthe wealthiest Americans. There are still some ideologues who dispute these points, but there are ideologues who still disputeevolutionandglobal warming— best tomove along.

Second, Piketty puts conservatives in a rather awkward position. Conservative values, like “opportunity,” “family” and “tradition” — which are broadly supported by Americans — were once the backbone of the Republican Party. Today, that tradition has been jettisoned by the GOP in favor of becoming a subservient vessel for the richest of the rich. Some conservatives have argued that inequality isn’t a problem because government transfer programs — Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare — reduce inequality. This is certainly true, but these are the same transfer programs conservatives are so eager to cut! So if conservatives wish to make this argument, they must implicitly accept that transfer programs work to alleviate inequality, and therefore that cutting them will increase inequality." -- Sean McElwee